Goal of Nelsonville Music Festival: zero waste

As the Nelsonville Music Festival expands in size, stature and buzz, its organizers want to scale back one element of the annual event: the garbage left behind.

Kevin Joy, The Columbus Dispatch

As the Nelsonville Music Festival expands in size, stature and buzz, its organizers want to scale back one element of the annual event: the garbage left behind.

The four-day affair — which will begin today and attract about 5,000 people to the grounds of Hocking College, 60 miles southeast of Columbus — is striving to become a zero-waste gathering.

Zero, however, is relative: A trash-diversion rate of 90 percent is considered zero waste.

“We’re trying for all the way,” said Brian Koscho, the festival’s marketing director. “We’re fine with an A-minus.”

In recent years, the festival has partnered with Rural Action — a community-service group focused on bettering Appalachian Ohio — to help execute “green” efforts, which include reusable beer mugs and mandatory compostable containers and utensils for food vendors.

Food scraps will also be hauled away for composting.

Sales of bottled water will be limited. Instead, free filling stations will be on-site for patrons to fill their own vessels with unlimited water.

The event is promoting communal travel via the use of GoBus service, with low-cost direct routes to Nelsonville from Columbus and Cincinnati.

Koscho, meanwhile, has recruited 100 zero-waste volunteers to work three shifts. In exchange, they’ll each get a weekend festival pass.

The concept can work in large settings.

The 105,000-capacity Ohio Stadium launched a zero-waste effort in 2011, achieving and surpassing that standard last football season. (A record 98.3?percent recycling rate was met during the Nov. 3 game against the University of Illinois.)